ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the systemic and complex nature of our society. The strength of public institutions depends on how they adapt to complexity, with public leadership a key issue in this process. This chapter applies a phenomenon-based approach to addressing societal problems, highlighting the need for systemic change. This approach is a prerequisite to conceiving of human-centredness as a guiding principle in public leadership and in producing and delivering public services. The chapter suggests that while, ontologically, the increase in societal complexity can be debatable, the epistemological view tells a story of increased and extensive complexity. This tendency is explained with the help of the ‘wicked problem concept’. Instead of slicing societal problems into governable pieces, this chapter takes a holistic view and accepts that phenomena cannot be understood only on the basis of what is known about their constitutive parts. The main part of the chapter discusses how complexity thinking can be used to develop phenomena-based governance and leadership. Of particular interest here is the question of how complexity thinking can be used to support societal resilience, which is conceptualised as a multisystemic phenomenon. It is assumed that climate change, pandemics, and the many societal challenges we currently face will force governments, public institutions, and organisations to adapt to the ‘new normal’. The chapter claims that addressing societal resilience through the lens of complexity allows public leaders to understand some general principles of its formation. While societal resilience cannot be designed, the chapter argues that it can be exercised and cultivated. This can be supported through the emergence, self-organisation, diversity, feedback loops, trust, and different agency groups.
